


A Formula for Intimacy

by Kryptaria



Series: If You Were... 'verse outtakes and cut scenes [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Dom!John, Drawing on people kink, If You Were verse, M/M, Math, Porn, Really it's math+porn, Related to Control and Surrender, The original Moriarty was a mathematics genius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:11:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When inspiration strikes, you've got to work with whatever's on hand. Of course, when that involves John Watson and a pen, there's going to be a price to pay, even if you're the world's finest Consulting Criminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Formula for Intimacy

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed, barely proofread, probably but not definitely related to the If You Were... 'verse. Still, it had to be written.

John came awake slowly instead of all in a rush, consciousness teased out of sleep not by the memory of explosions and screams but by a gentle tickling on his back. He blinked against his pillow and smelled expensive cologne and familiar soap and _Jim_. His eyes focused on the brushed steel framework that looked like an alien spider’s leg but served as a bedside lamp. The tiny, blindingly bright halogen lamp at the end of the armature was glowing.

“What —” he started, flattening his palms to the futon to push himself over.

A hand pressed gently on the back of his neck. “Stay,” Jim said, in that curiously intense way of his.

The tickling sensation returned, a silent whisper sparking nerves to life, somewhere over John’s right shoulderblade.

“What exactly are you doing?” John asked, proud that he kept his voice mild and calm. He turned his head enough that he could see Jim out of the corner of one eye. His knees pressed into the futon to John’s left, but all John could see was a bare hip and the length of one thigh. Apparently he was leaning over, right hand balanced on the other side of John’s body.

“Predictive algorithm,” Jim muttered, starting a new line of touches under the first. “Pursuit curve maths accounting for tri-dimensionality of a city, with limitations for buildings and underground access. Tube, sewer tunnels, that sort of thing.”

“You’re — Jim, are you _writing on me?_ ” John asked, trying to sit up again.

“John!” Jim snapped, catching him by the back of the neck again. Then his fingers tensed and eased, and he said, more softly, “Please. I need to get this before I lose it.”

John wasn’t angry — just baffled. He nodded and eased back down, closing his eyes, wondering if he could pick up on what Jim was writing.

It wasn’t exactly the first time he’d experienced this, though it had been fifteen years or more, and doing _maths_ on him was a far cry from his first girlfriend’s heart-and-initials doodle in lipstick. John snorted out a little laugh as he remembered how he’d quite enjoyed smudging that lipstick all over the sheets after she was done.

He and Jim weren’t dating. They weren’t in love. They were fucking, with absolutely no shame or hesitation or regret, and they were enjoying themselves immensely. At least, John was, and he was pretty sure Jim was, too.

But this was strangely intimate, feeling a pen — some sort of marker was his guess, since it wasn’t digging in the way a ballpoint would — trace over his skin. “This will come off, won’t it?” he asked.

The pen paused for just a moment.

John sighed. “It’s fine, Jim. You’ll scrub it off as best you can, and if it doesn’t all come off... I’ll just make sure you’re marked equally as long,” he threatened.

Jim’s laugh was warmly rewarding. “That’s incentive for me to get the sharpie. _Sir,_ ” he added, letting his voice drop to a low purr that made John shiver pleasantly.

John hid his own laugh in the pillow and turned his head to the other side, so he wasn’t facing the light. Jim’s body threw sharp shadows across the pristine white sheets. The way he was propped up, John had a perfect view of his right wrist, abraded and bruised. The light wasn’t quite good enough for John to make out the individual twists of the ropes, but John closed his eyes and let himself remember, as the writing faded from his awareness. He was a soldier, and old habits died hard; he could sleep through almost anything.

 

~~~

 

“Tell me I’m absolutely fucking brilliant.”

The warm whisper ghosted over John’s skin, pulling him from his doze in soft, gentle steps. A tongue brushed over the curve of his ear before lips tugged at his earlobe. Body tingling, John rolled over and looked up to find Jim grinning down at him, his brown eyes bright and sharp, almost manic.

“Are you doing straight espresso shots again?” John teased, unable to keep from grinning. He wasn’t in love — he couldn’t even think about that — but he couldn’t deny the affection he felt for his strange, enthusiastic partner.

“Better.” Jim leaned down and kissed him roughly, spreading his legs to settle his weight over John’s hips. “Fuck me and tell me I’m brilliant, John.”

John’s breath hitched. “Progressive pursuit _what?_ ” he asked, dredging his memory and coming up with something that he knew sounded wrong.

“Predictive pursuit curve for a restricted three-dimensional solution,” Jim said between licks and bites at John’s lips. “The mathematics of hunting prey in an urban environment. Soldier math.”

They were both breathing a bit heavier now; Jim’s lust was apparently contagious. Needing to take back control, John caught him by the upper arms, flattened his feet on the futon, and turned, throwing Jim over onto his back. Jim gasped and tried to twist free, but John was already settling between his legs. Jim was hard; he bucked his hips, enticing John’s body into rousing.

“And why are you, _brilliant_ as you are” — John punctuated the endearment with another push of his hips, making Jim throw back his head and gasp — “doing ‘soldier math’ at half four in the fucking morning _on my body?_ ”

“Didn’t want to leave the bed. _Please_ fucking get inside me already,” Jim said roughly, wrapping his legs around John’s body, invitingly canting his hips up.

“Fucking hell,” John muttered, not even trying to fight back. “Let me get —”

“Here!” Jim felt around on the pillow where John had thrown him, finding the condom he must have stashed there earlier. He tore open the packet, worked the condom free, and threw the wrapper away.

“Lube,” John said, reduced to speaking and thinking in single-syllable concepts as Jim’s hands wrapped around his cock, stroking and teasing.

“Don’t need. I prepared myself before I woke you. _Just fuck me already_.”

For one moment, everything stopped at the mental image of Jim working himself open with his fingers. They’d fucked earlier, but it was too goddamn hot to imagine.

The image must have scrambled his perceptions, though. He’d been dozing, not sleeping, and he could’ve sworn that Jim had been writing on him — somewhere down on his left thigh, by that point — before he’d slithered up John’s body to whisper in his ear.

“Wait — you were” — he bit down on a sigh as Jim rolled the condom in place — “you were still writing —”

“Yes! I didn’t want to waste time, so _stop talking and fuck me!_ ”

With a determined growl, John twisted to get his left shoulder under Jim’s leg and pushed forward, propping him up and off-balance. He gave Jim’s arse a hard, admonishing slap that made him yowl in surprise.

He thrust in hard, trusting that Jim had prepared himself sufficiently. It turned the howl into a sobbing moan of satisfaction. He pulled almost all the way out and looked, needing to see his cock disappearing into Jim’s body. There were hazy black ink smudges on the sheet; looking farther back, he could see sharper lines drawn all the way down his calves.

Jim clawed at his upper arms until John caught him by the wrists, pinning his hands to either side of the pillow.

John tightened his hands and started fucking him in earnest. “You’re absolutely fucking brilliant, Jim,” he said, “but shut the fuck up.”

Jim stared up at him, eyes gone very wide and dark. “But —”

“You started this, Jim, but I’m going to fucking finish it. I’m going to come, and you’re _not_ going to come. Then we’re going to shower, and you’re going to scrub every line off me. And _maybe,_ if you get enough of the ink off, I’ll let you come.”


End file.
